My Latest Grievance (3 page)

I wanted to be cool. I wanted my father to drive a car and wear a suit to work. I wanted my mother to read
Vogue,
color and straighten her gray hair, wear high heels, cut the crusts off my sandwiches. I knew from television that families were supposed to live in houses, to sleep uninterrupted by fire drills or homesick freshmen, and eat by themselves in dining rooms that didn't seat a thousand. Mothers cooked and fathers carved, except when the real-life mother was a sociologist worried about gender stereotyping, and the father agreed with the mother about everything.

And there was the basic yet awful matter of my name, Frederica Hatch, due to the unfortunate coincidence of a maternal grandmother named Frieda, who died six weeks before I was born, and a favorite paternal great-uncle Frederic, who'd been a Freedom Rider at eighty. I asked my parents if they had wanted a boy, and they scoffed at that paternalistic notion. When asked if an accidental boy child would have been Frederic, they said no. It was
Frederica
that they loved. The unlucky boy would have been Julius Frederic after Julius Rosenberg. I was always Frederica inside our house. Did I want to be burdened with a common name? Be the third Lisa and fourth Susan in my classroom? Darlene or Doreen or Maureen?

I did.

Matters were made worse because my best friend, Patsy Leonard, lived in the bosom of my ideal family—a well-balanced lineup of two boys and two girls, miraculously alternating in birth order: Peter, then Patricia, then Paul, then Pammy. Mrs. Leonard cooked, baked, volunteered. Mr. Leonard managed a men's clothing store, dressed stylishly, played golf. There was a cookie jar on their kitchen counter in the shape of a gingerbread house, and a big glass pitcher, round and perfect, exactly like the one used on television to spell out "Kool-Aid" in its own condensation. Mrs. Leonard wore half aprons and—to the scorn of my mother, who once witnessed the act—applied lipstick and combed her hair just before Mr. Leonard came home from work.

I could hear the thinly veiled condescension in my mother's voice when she asked, "I know they're smart people because you wouldn't spend so much time at the Leonards' if they weren't..., but do you ever see any member of that family reading a
book
?"

I said of course I did. Mrs. Leonard went to the library once a week, like clockwork.

"That's right," said my mother. "She's home during the day. She probably has ample time to go to the library."

"Maybe she's home during the day because they have four times as many kids as we do."

I wanted a sister. I wanted two brothers, one younger, one older. When I requested a sibling, my mother was succinct and scientific: "I think you remember that I had a hysterectomy because of fibroids. You were five or six at the time—you stayed with Grandma while I was in the hospital."

I noted that she might have obliged me before that, in the five or six years between my birth and the operation.

"You're being silly," she said. "First, where would we put them? Second, would Daddy and I have been able to read you every single volume of the
Golden Book Encyclopedia
if we had more children to put to bed? And how would your siblings squeeze in practicing the piano within the constraints of the dorm's quiet hours? You're also forgetting how much you dislike babysitting."

"So?"

"There's a negative correlation between hating babysitting and living with siblings. And let me point out that you seem to have carte blanche, anyway, to run over to enjoy the company of their baby ... Penny?"

"Pammy. Pamela Christine"

I reminded her, as I did frequently and defensively, that Mrs. Leonard had been the valedictorian of her high school graduating class.

"You think I'm a snob," my mother said. "But I can assure you that I don't care one iota where someone's from or what kind of house they live in or what kind of automobile they drive."

That part was true, as long as the houses and cars weren't too grand, too status-conscious. I'd heard disparaging remarks about the Leonards updating their station wagon every two years and—worse—Mrs. Leonard's silver fox-trimmed overcoat.

"Mary-Pat Leonard is a very nice, very earnest woman," my mother said, "and a breath of fresh air compared to some of my colleagues. I've never said one word against her. And why in the world would I? They're very hospitable, and I think it's broadening for you to spend time with all kinds of people."

What
I
liked best about the Leonards was the very quality that made my mother question the family's collective brains: their ability to find happiness in an excess of Christmas decorations and marathon games of Monopoly. All that it took to gain their friendship was good manners and relative cheerfulness. While I spent a good deal of my own time cultivating a prematurely sardonic view of life, I secretly longed to be what my parents scorned the most—conventional.

What did I truly have to complain about? Nothing that growing up and appreciating my parents' particular brand of quirkiness didn't cure. I wouldn't have lasted long in a noisy Leonard house, two children per bedroom and grace at every meal. Still, at sixteen, the grass was infinitely greener. Mrs. Leonard was pretty, young, fun. She, too, had a wedding photograph on her dresser that promised everything I thought a glittering white dress, a lace mantilla, and a smiling groom could deliver.

I had seen in the photograph of Laura Lee French, arm entwined and leaning toward my father in nuptial joy, the suggestion that I'd been born on the wrong side of the divorce, that this was a woman who would be best friends with Mrs. Leonard. Together they'd plan the annual block party, exchange recipes, measure each other's hems against yardsticks as coffee perked on the stove.

And even though I knew, logically and genetically, that a child born to my father and Laura Lee would be someone other than me, I couldn't stop imagining the maternal road not taken. My second thank-you note to Laura Lee took on the tone of an autobiography. I filled out a form of my own making, the kind of questionnaire I liked to study in teen magazines: favorite color, favorite TV show, favorite flavor ice cream, favorite poet, favorite Beatle, last book read, dream job, most embarrassing moment, astrological sign, pets, nicknames. I hoped she would take my letter for what it was, an invitation to become my pen pal.

To my great delight and that of Patsy's, she sent back an interview with herself, a Q and A, with lots of typos, yet impressing me with the special effects of a black-and-red typewriter ribbon. Her favorite food was something called Chateaubriand. Her favorite nonalcoholic beverage was a root beer float with (when available) French vanilla ice cream. Favorite team: none. Best feature: hair, waist, complexion, bone structure, posture, neck, calves, ankles. Her favorite item of clothing was a pair of black, high-heeled Rockette shoes ("Long story!" she wrote). Favorite proverb: Let bygones be bygones. Goal in life: none, other than happiness. Event or occasion she looked forward to most: meeting Frederica Rebecca Hatch.

I
HAD SOMETHING
like a friend on campus, fellow teenager Marietta Woodbury, the rude and fast daughter of our new college president. Each visit to the executive manse was an exercise in my best behavior, self-imposed, because I enjoyed confusing the First Family, forcing them—or so I hoped—to wonder how the rabble-rousing Hatches had fared so well in the daughter department.

We'd met at Dr. Woodbury's inauguration, a grand affair with presidents of most area colleges or their designees marching in academic regalia. The outgoing president was an elderly man, once a professor of theater at Yale, considered benign though increasingly dotty. He never could make the semantic adjustment from "girls" or "coeds" to "women," which was becoming necessary in the 1970s. His chestnut brown toupee was a source of embarrassment to the board of trustees and the butt of campuswide jokes. His vagueness needed addressing when luncheon condiments began dotting his chin, and pee often spotted his fly after trips to the men's room.

My parents had loved him, mostly because the softest part of his brain was the lobe that processed labor relations. One minute after
the National Labor Relations Board declared that faculty were covered by the National Labor Relations Act—forever after celebrated by the Hatch family as a holiday with cake—the Dewing Society of Professor rose from the ashes of an impotent faculty council. Daycare center? Personal days? Eyeglass coverage? Almost everything the newly certified union put on the table sounded reasonable to ex-professor President Mayhew.

Before the next round of negotiations, the college's chief financial officer had replaced his boss with his own management-minded self. Soon the quiet phase of a presidential search began, resulting in H. Eric Woodbury, who came from a small, inferior school in Maryland, just the training ground for Dewing. He passed the wining, dining, and courting of trustees with flying colors. Mrs. Woodbury promised to provide what had been absent for a dozen years during the Mayhew term: a First Lady, a hostess, a wifely presence.

Except for my parents, who saw a chill ahead at the bargaining table, all of Dewing was hopeful: Dr. Woodbury had degrees from Penn and Columbia, and a slight unexplained limp that gave him the air of an injured soldier returning to civilian life on
Masterpiece Theatre.
I attended his induction in a flame-colored dress of a shiny, man-made material, bought for the occasion after negotiating hotly with my mother over its appropriateness, length, and future wearability.

My first sight of Marietta told me that she was okay: outfitted in a suit that said "mother's taste," with a hemline that said "mind of my own." She had pinned her corsage on top of her shoulder, which struck me as original and rakish.

Spotting a teenage girl, me, at the punch bowl, Mrs. Woodbury rushed over. She shook my hand with her gloved one and asked what grade I was in. Would I like to come over to the house once they were settled? That girl over there in navy blue—tall for her age but also in tenth grade—was her baby, Marietta. She didn't make friends very easily but was an interesting and talented young lady. Did I ride?

"Ride what?" I asked.

"Horses?" she asked hopefully.

"Not so far."

"Perhaps when you go to college," she murmured. "Many schools have stables and equestrian programs."

Before I could say that I'd hate those schools and the girls who came with them, she yoo-hooed, "Marietta! I have someone who wants to meet you!" The girl's response was slow, defiant, but she did make her way over to us. She was one of those daunting teenage girls who could pass for twenty-five and smoked Virginia Slims. Later I would learn that I'd seen Marietta's best behavior on display, negotiated in advance for a payment equal to a mohair sweater in a color she didn't yet own.

"You at the high school?" Marietta asked.

I said yes, sophomore.

"Boyfriend?"

"Kind of."

Mrs. Woodbury chirped that she'd heard Brookline public schools were excellent. She and Dr. Woodbury had decided to give Brookline High School a trial, then evaluate the situation midyear. "Marietta's an unconventional learner," she offered. "And a little more social than we'd like."

"You can talk to my parents about it," I offered. "They go to every PTO meeting. Well, they alternate so someone's always on dorm duty. You could also talk to the Dewing seniors who student-teach there."

"That must be creepy," said Marietta.

I said no, it wasn't. Maybe that was because I'd lived my whole life in a dorm, surrounded—

"Do you meet their boyfriends, too? When they pick the girls up for dates?"

I smiled a smile that I hoped suggested chronic residential social prospecting.

Marietta said, "My father could have had a job at an all-boys' school, but he took this job instead. Do you believe it?"

"It was a secondary school!" her mother scolded. "No one accepts the job of headmaster if he can be a college president."

I knew this was my chance to reel in Mrs. Woodbury. Marietta could wait. I was popular at Brookline High, which she'd grasp as soon as she set foot in the cafeteria. I said to Marietta, "I think you'll change your mind. The whole world is coed." Then—quoting the catalogue—"But a woman's college offers a unique environment of support while fostering independence and higher career goals." I signaled to Marietta that this was public relations, so please bear with me. Her mother put her arm around my waist and squeezed. "I think we've discovered a treasure," she cooed. "Marietta was dreading the move for all kinds of reasons, but here's one we can cross off her list: a new friend."

Marietta asked, "Wanna leave?"

"Can't. I have to mingle. Want to come with me? I'll introduce you to a couple of deans over by the hors d'oeuvres."

"Men deans or women?" Marietta asked.

My parents found it distasteful that Dewing failed to promote from within its own ranks. My mother had wanted the job, had made the first cut—a courtesy extended to all faculty who had applied—but fell off when the list went from long to short. Aviva and David discussed filing a suit based on several brands of discrimination: gender, religious, or union activity.

Counsel for the union dissuaded her after a cursory evaluation of the finalists, all of whom had been presidents or deans somewhere. Aviva's administrative experience had been tested only in the Hatch parlor, where the faculty union executive committee cooked up its various strategies, and her one-semester stint as acting department head in Sociology. Still, it was her nature to feel downtrodden, to bite the hand that fed her, to grieve, protest, picket, sue.

I was slipping, philosophically speaking. Not that I didn't want wrongs to be righted, but I also wanted the freedom to voice my admiration for things material and foolish, and to wear clothes not stitched by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union.

My friendship with the Woodburys worried my parents. Wasn't the president's daughter spoiled? Rides to school and enough shoes for an entire Third-World village? "If her parents spoiled her," I answered, "it's their fault, not hers."